What? You seem to be classifying it as a shitpost, and I fail to see why. I saw someone in another thread saying they think it'd be cool if id ported Doom 3 to idTech5, and I thought of a few reasons why that would actually harm the game and not have it gain anything. This is the post it was indirectly a response to:

Marnetmar said:It might be kind of cool if someone at id decided to port Doom 3 to id Tech 5 and then sell it on steam. There's no chance of it and it'd most likely be next to impossible, but it'd still be cool.

I just wanted to make an informative post outlining why newer isn't always better when it comes to engines, especially when the fundamental rendering technologies behind it are completely different. I'm not saying that idTech5 is bad, it's anything but, but there are certain things that aren't appropriate for it, and Doom 3 is easily one of them, since it absolutely depends and is based on features that were removed in idTech5.

It's a classic soda post because it's an assertion on a topic that didn't need refutation. The claims made in the OP seem like common sense to anyone who has seen either game in action. It also seemed to come out of the blue, like it would if I were to make a thread titled, I don't know, "An Essay on the Economics of Nigeria" in the Everything Else forum. Yes, technically it's OK to make such a thread; it's consistent with the subject of the subforum. But boy would it seem random, even within the context of a forum where you can make a thread on all sorts of subjects.

On that note, it's a classic soda post because it just didn't need its own thread. If this is an offshoot of some random conversation in some other thread, the least that could have been done is to add that disclosure so people didn't open the thread, like I did, and just say, "Well, duh... why does this thread even exist?"

All that said, for what it's worth, and to anyone that it's not blatantly obvious to: Moving D3 over to iT5 would destroy D3's core gameplay. The gameplay relies on the real-time lighting. The aesthetic relies on said lighting even more. iT5 is a total piece of shit when it comes to immersion via lighting. I loved Rage, but its indoor areas are the flattest, dullest, least-inspiring environments I've seen this generation. The textures looked like they were from a 2002 game, or worse.

But really, that seems like common sense to anyone who has the slightest clue. Seems like this could have been covered in whichever thread this idea was being thrown around in.

True, it was quite random. I figured it'd be immediately obvious to anyone with any knowledge about the actual workings of the engine, but this was moreso intended for people that had no idea (like Marnetmar, no offence).

No real need for further discussion, I guess. In retrospect, I should've just made it as a reply in the thread Marnetmar's post was in.

printz, I think the idea was that since a great deal of Rage would take place outdoors, and it wasn't going for a shadowy/horror aesthetic, it was technically smarter to just not include that kind of technology this time around.

Still, that would mean someone using the engine would need to rely on outdoor areas for the best effect like id Tech 4 for indoor areas. Let's hope id Tech 666 can actually manage to do both at the same time eh?

When was that post I made from anyway? Surely it was several months ago, and I've already been educated on why I was wrong. I think creating a separate thread is a little overkill as well, assuming it was directed at me in particular.

Mogul said:printz, I think the idea was that since a great deal of Rage would take place outdoors, and it wasn't going for a shadowy/horror aesthetic, it was technically smarter to just not include that kind of technology this time around.

I thought I had read in Wikipedia that idTech5 would have, unlike 4, penumbras (blurry shadows for distant objects).

Cyanosis said:Still, that would mean someone using the engine would need to rely on outdoor areas for the best effect like id Tech 4 for indoor areas.

In my opinion, that's pretty much how it turned out. Rage's outdoor areas are stunning, but the indoor areas are shockingly bad-looking for a 2011 game. I'm with you, in that it would be nice if we could get an engine from id that did both kinds of areas well. Unfortunately, engines that handle both at a high level are historically pretty rare.

Mogul said:it would be nice if we could get an engine from id that did both kinds of areas well. Unfortunately, engines that handle both at a high level are historically pretty rare.

I can imagine that such an engine would be very, very demanding. If you wanted an engine with both realtime lighting and megatexturing, it would require an extra megatexture for normal mapping, since it can't just be baked in anymore when you take realtime lighting into account. Even the normal maps would look awful with the compression, and give everything an odd appearance due to the distorted shape caused by the compression used by Rage's texutres.

In the end, although megatexturing is an interesting concept, it doesn't really have much to offer over traditional tiling-texture engines. I'd bet that Rage would look largely the same if it were redone with tiling textures instead.

If my posts really are that bad, than are you able to point out any specific flaws in the following quote?

Sodaholic said:I can imagine that such an engine would be very, very demanding. If you wanted an engine with both realtime lighting and megatexturing, it would require an extra megatexture for normal mapping, since it can't just be baked in anymore when you take realtime lighting into account. Even the normal maps would look awful with the compression, and give everything an odd appearance due to the distorted shape caused by the compression used by Rage's texutres.

In the end, although megatexturing is an interesting concept, it doesn't really have much to offer over traditional tiling-texture engines. I'd bet that Rage would look largely the same if it were redone with tiling textures instead.

Maes said:The premises behind them are bad. A few well-written posts in an otherwise conceptually flawed thread won't save the day.

I still don't really see the problem with this thread, even if it was a bit random and obvious. It was still informative, in the sense that it included specific, succinct details that demonstrated my point, which in this case is why a newer yet fundamentally different engine had specific weaknesses compared to it's direct predecessor in certain aspects of rendering.

To those who find Soda's thread useless: I learned something today. He said that "idTech5 bakes everything into it's textures, the lighting, the normal maps, the whole shebang." I've been wondering why Rage somehow looks worse than Doom 3 in some respects. This is not only extremely disappointing, but why the hell would id take such a giant leap backwards in this regard?